Castle Daguerre
Preparatory work continues apace – the last couple of weeks have been spent cleaning out a playhouse I built for my children quite a few years ago. My son is now in college, and my daughter is a senior in high school. The playhouse wasn’t getting much use – storage and the occasional mouse house. I decided a while back that regardless of any safety precautions taken, I don’t want bromine or mercury inside my house. Ergo – the rebirth of the playhouse into “Castle Daguerre“. Yesterday I built a couple of workbenches. Today was spent getting components at Home Depot and beginning to wire it for electricity. It is really quite amazing the number of trades and processes that you get to dip into on the way to becoming a daguerreotypist. So far I have been researcher, optical repaiman, camera repairman, carpenter and electrician. I do have to remind myself from time to time why I am doing all this work, but I keep three antique daguerrotypes on my bedside table so I don’t forget. Once I get the studio built I am going to get back to figuring out that whole plate production thing. I am still completely stumped about what polishing method to use. Too many choices.
Daguerreotype Process | andy | August 3, 2008
bromine, castle, Contemporary Daguerreotypist, historical, mercury, Plates
Here I am trying to convert my little bathroom into a darkroom and daguerreian studio and you have an entire daguerreotype castle! ;)
Well, don’t feel too jealous. ;) Like most castles it has no heat, no light and no running water. It must have belonged to a pretty low rent king too because it is 6 ft x 6 ft inside and has a ceiling three inches shorter than I am… It does have a cool trapdoor into a “dungeon” below that the kids liked – I haven’t quite figured out how to work that in to my daguerreian dreams however…
Hi Andy, cool castle! I’m fairly new to daguerreotypy and I’m reading some of your posts here and they’re really great. I didn’t want to butt in on the very technical conversations about what kinds of copper or silver you use and so forth, but I just had to say that my dad made my brothers and I a really cool castle as well.
Ours was multi-piece castle towers and castle walls complete with drawbridge, courtyard, turrets, staircases, and even catapults! It was probably 5′ by 5′. Anyway that was my favorite “toy” growing up and if they’re like me I’m sure your kids loved it!
Sorry about this random comment, that picture just brought me back!
Hi Joe- Please feel free to comment about anything I post . You can also ask questions here, or go to http://www.contemporarydaguerreotypes.info/ and open up the DagForum. Many people far more expert than I are posting there.
Re the castle – I built it because I would have wanted one as a kid. I grew up on military bases, so my dad wasn’t able to build one for me, but I built countless “forts”. Having “places” helps kids enrich their imaginations so they grow up and do interesting things like making dagurreotypes. :)
Great, thank you Andy. I’ll check out that forum now and I’ll stop back here as well.